REFLECTIONS ON THE KINGDOM OF GOD
    PART III
    June 5, 2012

Definitions of the Kingdom of God are always inadequate, so Jesus gave us pictures of the Kingdom of God through the parables he told. Today, we look at the third, and longest parable, found in Luke 15. It is often called the Parable of the Prodigal Son, though the focus is really on the father and his unconditional love.

One of the families I visit in India is the Raval Family. They live in Delhi in a slum area, but being poor has nothing to do with their story. There are five daughters, one son, and the parents. The two oldest daughters are married, and now live with their husbands’ families. Last October the middle daughter, Gita, ran away from home to Mumbai to marry. This was a disgrace to the Raval family in a culture where marriages are arranged. Gita had brought shame to her family.

Being the practical American, I could see that the parents were better off with one less dowery to pay. And from Gita’s side, I could see that she may have been running away from a poor family situation and an alcoholic father. Yet in an “honor/shame” culture the important thing is that one never brings shame upon one’s family. Gita had done that.

In response the father communicated with Gita that if she ever came home, she would be killed. That would be the price for bringing shame to one’s family. In order to get married Gita had turned her back on her family forever. Again, that is something we have a hard time understanding, but much of Asia and Africa are based on this “honor/shame” thinking. Never disgrace the family or the community by your actions, or there will be consequences.

That is the kind of culture Jesus lived in, and so it sheds a different light on the parables that he told. This parable moves beyond that “honor/shame” kind of thinking and gives us a picture of unconditional love. As Jesus tells it, the younger son did not break the law, he did not bring shame to the family, he broke his father’s heart. The sheep in the first parable may have wandered away inadvertently. The coin in the second parable was inanimate, but in this third parable, the son was deliberate in his attempt to break all relationships. He did not care if he brought shame to his father. He takes what he can from the family and walks away.

What does it say to us? God grants us the freedom to reject his love. We can walk away from God. He wants us back, but he will not force us to come back.

And I don’t know if the younger son ever gets it. When he hits bottom and decides to return home, he thinks the issue is the money he has lost, but the real problem is the broken relationship with his father. How often is that us? Something weighs on our conscience, and we think we can just make amends, whatever that might be, but in reality the most important thing is always the relationships. Love is always the highest value.

The younger son wants to find a way to repay the money he has taken from his father. His solution is to work a craftsman. He would not be a slave or a servant in the home, where his pay would be room and board. No, he would work outside the home using skills to make money. He would not live in the family home, as part of the family. He wants to repay the debt, but he has the idea that he can do it himself without help by living in a servant-master relationship.

His hunger has opened his eyes, so that he wants to eat, but he has not faced his own sin. The most important thing is that he has failed to recognize his father’s love. The father’s love was always there, but the son did not perceive it.

I have a feeling that most of us believe that Jesus’ agony on the cross was the physical pain he endured. Yet the nails in his hands and feet and the pain of hanging there waiting for death were not the real agony for Jesus. The agony on the cross was not the physical torture, but the rejected love. That’s what the father in the parable feels . . .  the agony of rejected love.
 
The Pharisees were always complaining about the people with whom Jesus associated. In their eyes these people were the outcasts and sinners. They were the ones who brought shame to the community. Jesus gives them a clear picture of God; he wants to accept these people and show them love. Jesus is like the father in the parable, he runs to restore them with open arms.

The other character in the story is the older son. The story says that he was out in the fields. Rest assured that he has not been out working in the fields, as in doing manual labor; no he has been supervising the laborers, while he sat in the shade. He has a good life, and in ways he has taken advantage of his father’s goodness just as has the younger son. The younger son is a rebel and he knows it. The older brother is a rebel and does not realize it. He says, “I have never disobeyed you.” One thing is for certain, he despises his younger brother . . . “your son”. Older son is lost as well, because he does not understand the father’s love, and that love is not really a part of his life.

God loves the best of us and the worst of us just the same. That is a love so incomprehensible that it is difficult for any of us to understand, much less live. It’s easy to be like the Pharisees and think that God loves us because we keep the rules and live respectable lives. Yet we all need God’s love and forgiveness as much as any one. Younger son and older son both need the father’s love equally.

Unconditional love is a love that just is. It is never a love that comes because of what someone can do for you, or what we can do for someone. It is love because God is love . . . pure love.

In most of our minds there are people, who because they have made certain choices that have really messed up their lives, don’t deserve God’s love. We had just as soon not deal with them. The bottom line is that God loves them, and he calls us to do the same.



[Some of the ideas on biblical culture came from Kenneth E. Bailey, Finding the Lost: Cultural Keys to Luke 15.]